[mythtvnz] Freeview-T UHF Antenna in strong signal area

[Johan Schuld]

>
>
>
> 1: Get a medium/high gain antenna and mount and cable it properly. Get rid
> of the soon to be useless VHF antenna.
> 2: Put a mast head amp in. (I like the Kingray ones)
> 3: Relocate the antenna to the other side of the house which has line of
> sight and effectively divides the required cable length by 3 at least.


Hi All,

Sorry for the somewhat late reply to my original thread but things have got
in the way with playing around. I have got back to it in the meantime
though and got some interesting result. So I thought I'd share.

I decided to get another antenna after the current one fell apart when I
tried to move it after I removed the VHF antenna. Got a "antsig" 42 Element
one. No mast head amp, no splitters, no diplexers. Directly from the aerial
to my mythbox.

1: HVR4000 still perfect signal
2: Nova TD500 signal!!
3: HVR2200 no lock what so-ever

That's where I got to before I got sidetracked for a couple of weeks. I've
been watching HD-TV occasionally to see how it performs and after some good
results I decided to give the Nova-TD500 the highest input priority..   2
days later.. unwatchable recordings. Artifacts all over the place. It was
not even bad weather?

So I've been experimenting. primarily using the HVR4000 as  "femon" seems
to work quite well with it. I tried taking some elements off the antenna
(making it a 21 element) as I thought it might have too much signal. I also
tried a mast head amp and played with the gain just to see what the effect
is.

HVR4000 half ant (21 element, no mast head amp) (NovaTD500 & HVR2200 would
not get a lock)
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr  99% | ber 69 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr 100% | ber 0 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr 100% | ber 0 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr  99% | ber 5 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK

HVR4000 half ant (21 element), mast head amp on 100%  (NovaTD500 & HVR2200
 would not get a lock)
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr  97% | ber 737 | unc 26 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr  98% | ber 761 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr  98% | ber 403 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr  98% | ber 563 | unc 1 | FE_HAS_LOCK

HVR4000 full ant (42 element), no amp  (NovaTD500 would get a lock, HVR2200
would not)
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr 100% | ber 0 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr 100% | ber 0 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr 100% | ber 0 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK
status SCVYL | signal  21% | snr 100% | ber 0 | unc 0 | FE_HAS_LOCK

Interestingly (and a bit as expected), best reception seems to be with not
using an amp and using 42 elements. I'm not sure if the signal level and
snr actually correct, but the "BER" (Bit Error Rate) and "UNC" (number of
uncorrected blocks?) seem to be actually work. I've left the antenna with
42 elements and no mast head amp.

I'm still at a bit of a loss here. I know I can improve things still more
by moving the aerial to the other side of the house and replacing the cable
with a new (so known good) one, but I'm not convinced. It should not be
that hard? I have NEVER had reliable reception with DVBT on my mythbox.
(well.. apart from the HVR4000). Maybe just get 2 of those :)

Just to try, I have put the HVR2200 in a Win7 box. Installed the drivers
and had clear TV. Sometimes some artifacts but only just after tuning. I
would like to try the "firmware" that the win7 drivers use on my mythbox
but have not found a way to extract them.  Has anyone done something
similar? (currently using these
http://www.steventoth.net/linux/hvr22xx/firmwares/4019072/NXP7164-2010-03-10.1.fw
)

Cheers
Johan
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